


Omen of the Mountain

by kandinskys



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Ersa is a badass, Gen, taking some liberties with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 09:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kandinskys/pseuds/kandinskys
Summary: Avad wonders if Jiran had always been a bloodthirsty man simply waiting for the power to hurt those beneath him. Had the Mad Sun-King been who he truly was, his face covered by a mask of strong leadership and fatherhood? Had his hold on that facade slipped more and more as time passed, like silks spread over rotting meat?A look at Avad's childhood under the Mad Sun-King.





	Omen of the Mountain

Avad has half a memory of the day the mountain exploded, but he can only look at the scenes and events through the foggy lens of childhood. He remembers still being halfway in a dream when his mother, Aminah, swept him up into her arms, remembers the feel of her heartbeat against his shoulder as she ran, remembers Kadaman running in front of them, only a few years Avad’s elder.

 

He can easily picture his father, flanked on either side by Sun-priests in their blood red robes, all of them standing on the balcony, their eyes all turned to the mountain and the great plume of smoke rising steadily into the sky in front of the pale sunrise-colored sky. The mountain of the Bitter Climb exploded in the earliest hours of the morning, when the sun had only just peeked over the horizon, and Avad remembers that the day that followed was a flurry of scared priests and an angry Sun-King all trying to decipher the omen as the smoke darkened the sky.

 

More than the actual events, Avad remembers the feelings: a deep fear, deeper than his fears of phantom Snapmaws hiding in the gardens. He remembers feeling safe on his mother’s lap, with Kadaman as well, her arms wrapped around both of them. He remembers the confusion. The worry. And not only his fear, but the fear of everyone around him, the concern radiating off of them like noon-time heat.

 

If the moment had to be pinpointed, placed on a timeline, written on a calendar, Avad would say that the day the mountain exploded was the day that something in Jiran changed. Even as the priests all fluttered about like confused, frightened turkeys, it was as if Jiran looked at the smoke spreading across the sky and thought himself a weak leader, a feeble king.

 

It was in the days after the explosion, all of the Sun-Priests calling it  _ the omen of the mountain _ , that Jiran demanded his sons begin their training in the arts of fighting. He had swords forged for them and bows carved out of the best wood and brought the most skilled soldiers in the Sundom to tutor them. Now and then, Jiran would watch them learn, his face shadowed with an emotion that Avad never learned to place.

 

In later years, Avad would wonder if his father had actually changed in that moment, if he had once been a good father and a good king and those pieces of Jiran just chipped away over the years, first with the sky darkened by smoke, then with Aminah’s death, then the Derangement of the machines, until all he could do was go mad.

 

Or Avad would wonder if Jiran had always been a bloodthirsty man simply waiting for the power to hurt and harm those beneath him. Had the Mad Sun-King been who he truly was, his face covered by a mask of strong leadership and fatherhood? Had his hold on that facade slipped more and more as time passed, like silks spread over rotting meat?

 

* * *

 

In the months after Jiran’s death, scribes and historians and authors come to him, asking about the Mad Sun-King, about what kind of father Jiran had been, about what Avad’s childhood had been like underneath him. Avad makes excuses and promises - he cannot speak of it right now, he must focus on rebuilding the Sundom and protecting the people - and he sends them away.

 

Avad looks out from his position in his palace atop the mesa, his stomach churning. The nearby guards are stoic but attentive, their uniforms different than when Avad was a child. The sky is a lovely, beautiful shade of blue, and Meridian is calm today. And yet, Avad’s insides twist and knot as he thinks of his childhood. Trying to remember leaves a vice around his heart that makes it difficult to breathe.

 

He will speak of it at some point, he knows, but that day is not this one.

 

* * *

 

It is almost six months after the end of the wars and the raids that Avad decides it is time for all of this to be spoken of. He requests a scribe and an author both, personally invited, to come and hear and write. He also asks both Erend and Ersa to come as well - their stories are integral to his own, snarky nobles be damned - and he knows that as King now, he cannot appear weak or afraid, and he knows having them beside him will make this much easier.

 

There are still many, many issues that need attending to - the Shadow Carja hiding in the northwest, the unease he’s trying to sooth among all of the clans hurt by the Mad Sun-King, the reconstruction of Meridian - but this is important, too.

 

Right as Ersa, Erend, and Avad left the Claim to take Meridian, flanked by freebooters, Ersa had taken his hand in hers and squeezed it, tightly, as they walked.  _ History has its eyes on us, _ she said. 

 

And so, with Ersa on one side and Erend on the other, Avad speaks. 

 

He talks of Jiran and the few memories he has of him before the mountain exploded. He talks of how things changed from that day forward, how Jiran ruled his own home like a dictator with too much power, how Sun Queen Aminah was afraid of him, how she would cower and flinch when he moved towards her. Avad speaks of how he and his brother Kadaman were told to train and practice the same moves for hours on end underneath the hottest of the Sun’s rays, and if they were left with burns they would be punished.

 

They all had roles to play: Aminah, Kadaman, Avad, the dutiful family of the Sun-King.

 

When Avad is fourteen, Aminah dies - an illness, an injury, Kadaman and Avad were never told. The Sun-Queen received no funeral, no memorial service. Her pyre was the appointing of commanders and the earliest plans of the Red Raids.

 

Avad is sixteen when he first witnesses innocents sacrificed in the sun ring. They toss Oseram and Nora into the ring, their clothes dirty and ragged, their movements slow and shaky, and then Bahavas announced the start of this sacrifice and soldiers charge forth, into the ring, spears ready, and Avad looks away, stares at his own hands in his lap and - 

 

And then Jiran’s hand wraps around his shoulder, clenching tightly and Avad has to stifle a yelp of surprise. “Do not avert your gaze,” Jiran says. “Look. Gaze upon the will of the Sun.” His voice is calm. Composed. But with an order in there with a sharp threat behind it. 

 

Avad watches.

 

“Look to the Sun,” Jiran continues. “In all things, it is absolute.”

 

Avad nods, silent, obedient, and keeps his eyes forward until each human in the ring was dead, their bodies strewn about, their blood soaking the air. 

 

And Avad thought of his mother, how she stroked his hair as he sat in her lap, the both of them basking in the sunlight. "The sun is loving," she said, her voice soft, "even when it burns our skin - it loves harshly, feverently, and it doesn’t know what to do with all of it."

 

This did not feel like love. The sun shone down on the ring, but there was no warmth to the light.

  
  


* * *

  
  


The "gift" for Avad's nineteenth birthday, the day of Carja manhood, is another sacrifice in the ring. As Jiran speaks of the day's festivities, Avad remembers playing card games with his father as a child, when Jiran would lose on purpose and he and Aminah would tilt their heads back and let their laughter fill the air. He does not mention that to the scribe and the author - that is his own cherished memory, a last kind moment with Jiran in it.

 

The people in the ring are from everywhere: Nora women, Oseram children, Banuk shamans, even a few Carja, the tell-tale make-up smeared but not completely gone. Who would wipe the face of prisoners,  anyhow?

 

Their opponent is a Ravager.

 

Avad wonders for just a second how they managed to rope that thing into the ring without anyone dying, but the thought is only half-finished when the Ravager pounces. The Ravager tears a man in two. Avad risks a look at Kadaman, but Kadaman’s eyes are staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched hard. One by one, the prisoners, the sacrifices, fall - except for one. The cheering is deafening, until they all see what Avad and Kadaman saw: a young Oseram girl, dressed in brown, crouched beside one of the pillars. 

 

The audience falls silent. Kadaman sucks in a breath.

 

The Ravager hadn’t spotted her yet. It creeps around the ring, looking up to the watching people, and then, sensing her chance: the girl moves from her hiding spot, unnoticed by the Ravager until she's scrambling up its back, her hands clenching any metal handhold she can. It bucks, but the girl's grasp is tighter, and she grabs onto the cannon with both of her hands and then twists it, hard, like breaking a neck, and the cannon snaps loose.

 

With the cannon goes her hold on the Ravager too, and with another buck she goes flying, her body slamming into the wall of the ring and crumpling to the ground, sending up sand and dust.

Avad holds his breath. Kadaman, unthinking, reaches and takes Avad's hand and squeezes tight. Their eyes remain on the cloud of dust and sand, waiting for this Oseram girl to stand, to move. All of the crowd is watching. Silent.

 

The Ravager charges.

 

Bright blue lights burst forth from the cloud of dust, slamming into the Ravager's body. The Oseram girl holds the cannon in her hands and shoots and shoots and shoots, sending forth more blue beams even as the Ravager lies dead before her, pieces of its body strewn about the ring.

 

She staggers to her feet and walks towards the center of the ring, her shoulders squared. Avad wants to cry - she was alive, she had survived the ring, lived past all the prisoners and killed the Ravager with its own cannon, and she was alive.

 

“Glorious,” Jiran proclaims into the silence. “The Sun truly has blessed us this day: in eliminating weakness, the Sun has revealed hidden strength. This child is spared the day of my son’s birth. Take this one to the palace.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


“A gift to my son,” Jiran says, smiling softly. Avad looks up at him - he is grown now, but his father is still taller - and for a moment, the soft smile is a reminder of good times, of card games and walks in the gardens, but then Jiran steps aside and presents his second gift to Avad: the Oseram girl from the ring.

 

Her eyes are downcast, her movements slow, but there’s a strength in her limbs, muscles underneath the pale white slave garb.

 

The girl looks up, then. Her eyes meet Avad’s, and his throat swells shut again as he looks at her - she can’t be much older or younger than he himself is, and here she is before him, having watched her fellow tribesmen get slaughtered by a Ravager and then her great victory is to become a  _ gift _ , a slave, for the prince of a land she has never been to before.

 

Jiran and Bahavas are watching. Avad quickly places his obedient son facade on and nods, as if he is appraising this new servant. “Thank you, father.” He says, and Jiran’s smile returns. There weren’t always slaves in the palace - slavery had been outlawed long ago, but was reinstated by Jiran and his right-hand men, Bahavas and Helis, and so far any in the palace had been maids or cooks, out of sight. Bile rises in Avad’s throat.

 

(Later, Kadaman will tell Avad that this girl took down three Kestrels before even being thrown in the ring. It sounds like a warning, but with Bahavas and Jiran always listening, Avad knows the words for what they are: high praise to the Oseram girl.)

 

After Jiran leaves, Bahavas at his side, Avad bades the Oseram girl to go rest, and he does not look at her as she walks away even as he feels her eyes on him, watching. Waiting.

 

* * *

  
  


On nights he cannot sleep, Avad often finds himself in the palace gardens. The bushes and trees are comforting. They remind him of his mother, of days spent out here in the shade with his head on Aminah’s lap as she runs her fingers through his hair. The stone paths remind him of playing games with Kadaman, chasing each other until their lungs were out of breath and they collapsed on the grass, laughing.

 

It was in the gardens, late at night - or maybe early in the morning - that Avad learned the Oseram girl’s name, the first they truly spoke to each other. The bushes near him rustled and he went looking for the cause, only to find her with a fistful of berries, her mouth likely full as well.

 

A slave eating from the gardens was a grand crime - it was theft from the Sun itself. The two of them stopped, neither moving, as they stared at each other, her face speaking of defiance and rebellion, as if daring him to say or do something. Anything.

 

“What is your name?” Avad asks, curious.

 

She chews a bit and swallows the berries. “Ersa.” She says. “You’re Avad.”

 

“You’re right.” Avad says. And then, quieter, his voice a whisper, “You never should have been brought to Meridian, Ersa,”

 

Ersa’s eyes widen. “No. I should not have. And neither should anyone else.”

 

“You’re right,” Avad murmurs.

 

“Why?” Ersa asked. “Why does that - that  _ bastard _ do these things?”

 

“He thinks it will calm the machines,” Avad says. “He believes the Sun is punishing us with their anger, and it can only be paid for in blood.”

 

“He’s an idiot.” Ersa says, so point-blank that it’s hilarious.

 

The both of them talking in such a way is treason, and yet laughter bubbles up in Avad’s chest, breaking free. All the stress, the silence, was coming out now in the form of laughter. Ersa stares at him, likely confused, as the laughter turns into tears streaming down his face.

 

Through his tears, Avad looks up at Ersa, a thousand words all colliding together in his throat at once, but none of them would move past the others to be spoken out loud. He says nothing for many moments, until the sound of footsteps approaching made Ersa dart away into the shadows. The guard who rounded the corner questions nothing about Prince Avad standing in the corridor, and when Ersa does not return to him, he retires to his bedroom.

 

He couldn’t get the words out of his mouth, but he knew this: Ersa would not die here as a palace slave.

  
  


* * *

  
  


A few days later, Avad loudly requests that one of his guards find and escort “the slave woman” to his bedchamber. The guard complies, and when Ersa is all but shoved into the room, Avad, once again louder than probably necessary, orders the guards to allow him his privacy for a few minutes.

 

She sits on the bed, her entire body coiled like a spring ready to snap. 

 

Avad’s heart lurches into his throat. He takes one step, then another, towards her, and then drops to his knees, head bowed, before her, and immediately feels the tension dissipate.

 

“I will never hurt you,” Avad promises, his voice so low he’s not even sure if Ersa can hear him. But he can’t risk the guards hearing. He looks up to her from his position on the floor, catching her gaze, and continues. “I want to help you return home.”

 

Ersa surprises him yet again - she moves forward, wrapping her arms around him as she settles onto the ground in front of him, and for a long moment, they remain in their embrace, kneeling together on the stone tiles.

 

“Just a couple minutes, huh?” Ersa says, a grin spread across her face, and heat crawls up Avad’s face. 

 

“We uh,” Avad splutters, his voice still low and quiet, “uh. We’ll plan more soon. Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

 

Ersa then gives him the first of very, very many looks that says  _ Avad, I am not an idiot. _

  
  


* * *

  
  


Jiran remarries. She is a lovely, quiet, and kind-hearted woman named Nasadi from Brightmarket. She greets Avad and Kadaman kindly, and Avad wants desperately to like her, but whenever he sees her, often standing beside her new husband as the new Sun-Queen, he thinks of Aminah.

 

Kadaman is thinking the same thing. He is colder towards their new step-mother than Avad is. He is not cruel, nor unkind, but he is not warm or welcoming either. How could Nasadi be the new Sun-Queen when the Sun never truly set on the last one?

 

Aminah would have loved Nasadi, Avad knows.

 

She is pregnant quickly, another fact that leaves Avad and Kadaman both feeling even colder and more off-put than before. For a moment, Avad wonders why she never tried to speak to them of their mother, but in the next thought, he is glad that she hasn’t. He doesn’t know how it would feel for Aminah’s name to come out of her mouth, but he knows it wouldn’t be pleasant.

 

The night that Nasadi goes into labor, there is another sacrifice in the Sun-Ring. Avad and Kadaman will attend without even needing to be asked - Jiran used to summon them, every time, but it has been enough years that they know it is expected of them.

 

“The machines have only grown worse,” Kadaman states. He and Avad walk in the gardens, a momentary break from their neverending duties and training. “There are reports of a new machine. A stalker, they’re calling it. It can hide itself, slip into the very shadows.”

 

A shiver crawls down Avad’s spine, even in the afternoon heat.

 

Avad and Kadaman look at each other, expressions serious. The wind changes, pulling at their hair and clothes. They were children, once. They’re hardly more than children, now, but once, they were little and filled with laughter and silly questions and excitement, and they’d chase each other all around these very gardens.

 

Kadaman has a look in his eyes that Avad knows very well, from childish pranks to smart moves in card games. Kadman is planning something. 

 

This is the first time Avad is truly, deeply afraid of whatever that might be.

 

A nearby guard alerts them that they should be heading to the Sun Ring shortly. It is time.

 

“Tonight is supposed to be a massive sacrifice,” Kadaman murmurs. “One thousand people. To bless the birth of a new prince.”

 

“One  _ thousand _ ?” Avad repeats. His voice shakes. That’s so many people, so many innocents. People like him and Kadaman, only less lucky to have been born outside of Meridian. People like Ersa. People.  _ People.  _ They’ve always been people, and they have always had to watch, but this - this massive number -

 

There’s a new machine hiding in the dense forests that can slip in and out of the shadows. A machine designed to do nothing but kill. This carnage was appeasing nothing and no one except for Jiran himself.

 

Avad and Kadaman take their places on either side of their father. Nasadi’s seat is empty - she is heavily pregnant and resting in bed with a team of healers and midwives ready, not here to watch this.

 

Jiran talks of the sun. He speaks of its desire and its warmth and announces that today, this sacrifice is special, because it is a very special day. This will be the largest offering to the Sun as of yet, one thousand souls to be put into the ring, handfuls at a time, to fight against the machines.

 

The crowd applauds for their Sun-King.

 

Right as the cheers begin to die down, another voice booms from the crowd. Three men raise themselves up, their decorative Carja armor glinting in the light.

 

“This is butchery, Jiran!” the tallest of them shouts, and Avad’s breath catches in his throat when he recognizes him as a member of the Hunter’s Lodge. All three of them are.

 

“These deaths are meaningless! You think the Sun wants blood spilled? The Derangement has only gotten worse! No longer will we stand aside while you slaughter innocents!”

 

“No more!” Another of the Hawks cries.

 

The crowd bursts into murmurs of unease and uncertainty.

 

“Throw those three in the ring. Immediately.” Jiran demands, pointing at the dissenters.

 

“Father -” Kadaman protests.

 

“They are  _ traitors _ !” Jiran screams, and Avad watches, as if in slow-motion, as the guards shove through the crowd to the hunters and grapple them, the three men quickly overwhelmed by the guards before being thrown down into the ring. The crowd roars - with anger, with cheer, Avad is unsure, but they’re very, very loud.

 

Jiran points to the gatekeeper guard across the ring and the man nods and pulls the massive gate open, revealing a number of frail people from various places - there are Nora markings and Oseram tattoos and Utaru hairstyles all mixed together. They stumble into the ring, looking around, afraid, and then another gate is opened and a sawtooth comes roaring out and they scramble.

 

Avad looks to the hunters, standing opposite the gate where the condemned came from, and each one of them reveals something from under their armors - there’s the glint of a sword and the twang of a bow as an arrow flies across the ring and sinks home into the Sawtooth’s face.

 

And so begins the event that is known to most in Meridian simply as “the massacre,” as if the entirety of the Red Raids weren’t just one massive one.

 

The Sawtooth tears through the untrained group of condemned before the hunters can take it down, but with it’s fall there’s only another group of prisoners and another machine to fight. Three lancehorns are loosed next, and then two scrappers, and then there’s three more Hawks leaping into the ring, jumping down from their seats, their smuggled weapons already drawn,

 

They fight, and fight, and fight. The sun begins to set, and the Hawks begin to take turns fighting the machines while the others rest. They keep trying to save the prisoners as much as they can but only a few have been left unscathed, hidden behind even the resting hunters with the Hawks working hard to keep the machine’s attention.

 

“Sun-King Jiran,” A guard says. “Queen Nasadi has gone into labor,”

 

Jiran looks to the guard, and then back to the ring, his face twisted with anger. “I don’t have time for this,” he snaps. “Avad, go check on her for me. Come back only with news of my son.”

 

Avad nods, careful not to look too excited to be able to leave this carnage for just a moment.

 

“Guard,” Jiran says. “Find Helis. Tell him to retrieve more machines for tonight. Find all commanders you can and send them to me.” 

 

The guard nods, and is gone, and Avad stands there, looking at the back of his father’s head. The sounds of the ring echo in Avad’s ears - the clashing of metal, the puncturing of human flesh, the clinks of arrows sliding off of machines. The scent of blood hangs in the air, and this memory is burned into Avad’s mind forever.

 

Avad goes to find Ersa.

 

He finds her easily enough - she is in his bedchamber, waiting, as if she’d known. Their eyes meet, and Avad doesn’t have to say a word to convey that the time is now.

 

They work quickly and quietly. Avad hands her clothes that used to belong to his mother - Aminah was shorter and less muscular, but it’ll fit, and if Ersa keeps her head down and doesn’t speak much until she is free of the Sundom’s territory, she will not be a traveller of any note. Avad gives her the maps he had copied from borrowed books, both of Meridian and of the Sundom, and she reveals to him a compass of her own make, and without any words, he knows it’s to soothe his worries about her making it back home.

 

There’d been many secret meetings, many whispers and hushed voices, many intentionally mussed-up bed sheets to keep up the appearances, and their plans have culminated in this. Ersa is ready. She has Carja clothing and sturdy shoes and maps and rations and daggers, borrowed from clueless guards, never to be returned again. She stands near the window and gazes longingly at the distance.

 

“Ersa,” Avad murmurs. She turns to look at him, and his voice catches in his throat. He goes to try to speak again, but she speaks first.

 

“Thank you,” Ersa says. “If you ever wanna overthrow your bastard dad, come find my brother and I in the Claim. We have plenty of freebooters and angry Oseram who want to see that murderer dead.”

 

Tears begin to slip down Avad’s cheeks, but he has to stifle a giggle at that. He pulls Ersa into one last embrace, and then lowers their line of rope out the window - another loud request to the guards, another thing borrowed to never be returned. Avad braces himself against the wall, clutching the rope, as Ersa descends from the window. When she reaches the bottom, she tugs on it twice, and Avad lets go and listens to the tiny  _ thud _ of the rope hitting the stone.

 

He takes a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale.  And risks one look out of his window, and finds the streets empty.

 

Avad goes to Nasadi’s side quickly.

  
  


* * *

 

The Sun-Queen’s bedchambers are a frantic mess of midwives and healers flitting about. Nasadi is moaning and crying, tears slipping down her cheeks as each contraction wracks her body. Avad’s stomach churns at the sounds. He tries not to think of how her pain sounds so similar to the pain within the Sun Ring.

 

Avad waits. 

 

He knows nothing of childbirth beyond that it is long, painful, and difficult, and that the mothers of the world are blessed by the Sun itself to endure such a thing. He sits near Nasadi’s bed, against the wall, close enough to grasp her hand if she needs it, but far enough so he’s not in the way of the healers and midwives who know what they’re doing.

 

There are two guards posted just outside her bedroom, and Avad can see their unease, their concern, as they share quick glances and shift their weight back and forth. There’s been no news from the Sun Ring - but if every kestrel is either hunting more machines or in the ring itself, they wouldn’t know a single thing.

 

Around midnight, Nasadi’s exhausted cries and moans turn into screams, and the midwives and healers rush around her. Avad offers his hand and she grips it tight, and when the next contraction comes she grips his hand so tightly he thinks his bones will snap, but he does not pull away. The healers murmur encouragement, and it’s not too much longer before the baby is born.

 

They cut the cord and wipe the baby off and place him in Nasadi’s arms, and the Sun-Queen cradles him close and cries - but there’s a smile on her face this time, an exhausted one, but a smile just the same.

 

“He appears completely healthy,” A healer tells her, and Nasadi nods at the words. But her eyes are only on her tiny son in her arms.

 

“Itamen,” Nadasi states. “His name is Itamen.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Avad is twenty-one years old when his brother dies. It started with yet another new machine, crueler than the rest, and then with the Hawks leaping into the ring to protect innocents - but that is a lie. That may have been what spurred Kadaman to act, but it was not where it all began. 

 

It began with an omen of the mountain, with a black sky in midday, with the crumbling sanity of a man who was king. 

 

“They were butchered,” Kadaman tells Avad, two days after the massacre in the ring. “One thousand people. Five Hawks. The Sunhawk himself. At midnight, they released a Behemoth into the ring, and when they killed that one, there was another, just waiting. They were exhausted and tired and hurt and they were  _ butchered. _ ” 

 

Kadaman paces around the room, his eyes downcast. “There’s another thing, though,” He says after a few times walking back and forth, the same path worn into the carpeting already.

 

“The crowd - the people of Meridian… they started to root for the Hawks.”

 

Avad’s head snaps up. Kadaman’s gaze is intense and focused. 

 

“And Jiran?” Avad asks.

 

“There were too many people cheering, too many of them nobles. He couldn’t tell who was cheering for the Hawks and who wasn’t.”

 

“That’s incredible,” Avad breathes.

 

“I’m going to speak to him.” Kadaman states.

 

Fear leaps into Avad’s throat. 

 

“You can’t stop me,” Kadaman adds, seeing the look on his brother’s face.

 

“I am afraid,” Avad says. “But I would never dream of stopping you.”

 

Avad wishes later, that he had. That he’d told Kadaman about Ersa, about what she said right before escaping. He wishes that they’d left for the Claim that night, together. Avad wishes that Kadaman got to meet Ersa and Erend and Aloy and countless others.

 

Avad wishes that Kadaman would have lived to see a better Meridian.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


“The Sun has shown me weakness in my own bloodline!” Jiran bellows. Avad stands beside him, a weak Nasadi half-asleep sitting in her cushioned chair behind them. “Let us give thank the Sun for revealing this to me, let us praise the Sun for purging this weakness from us!”

 

Kadaman lies dead in the ring, run through by a Lancehorn.

 

Avad looks at the crowd, scanning them. A cheer rises up, but Avad can see them,  the faces of the frightened, mixed in with those who are celebrating this death.

 

“A purged weakness,” Avad says, careful to keep his voice solid and steady as the mesa. Jiran looks at him, surprised, since Avad has never been outspoken for much of anything, least of all in favor of this bloodshed. Jiran thought him a weak child - Avad would’ve likely been in the ring himself in a few short days. 

 

“Ah, my son,” Jiran says, and wraps one arm around Avad’s shoulders. 

 

“We are better without him,” Avad says, and Jiran’s smile is blinding.

 

Avad flees Meridian that night.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Avad and his Honor Guard are branded traitors as dawn comes, but they are already in Oseram territory. It takes them the entire night to cross into the Claim and, after a day of rest, another full day to reach the home Ersa spoke about. 

 

To the scribe and the author sitting with them, this is where Ersa and Erend begin to speak, letting Avad fill in the blanks. Ersa talks of how she returned home and how Erend cried for hours afterward, elated at her survival. 

 

“I knew he’d be coming,” Ersa says.

 

Avad is inclined to believe her - she and Erend had already been rounding up freebooters and warlords and others who had been resisting the raids. They viewed Avad and his guard with plenty of suspicion, but they trusted him on Ersa’s word alone. He could hardly blame them.

 

Months of planning stretch out in front of them, but they did it: gathering up a warband, planning, plotting. Preparing weapons and armor and back-up plans, and by the end of it, Avad had a few things he had not had in a long time: a family he would die for in Ersa and Erend, and a deep sense of hope at the idea of a new dawn.

 

Ersa and Erend remember more about the march on Meridian than Avad does - he remembers the plans to do as little damage to the city as they could. He remembers believing a few people would lay down their arms and either join the liberators or at least refuse to fight for Jiran - and he remembers being wonderfully surprised when many more people, nobles and merchants and farmers alike, joined their side than anyone expected.

 

They attacked in three groups - one at the main gates armed with cannonfire, one scaling the walls of the Temple of the Sun, and the last one infiltrating the palace through the aqueducts. The gate was quickly broken through, and those who scaled the walls opened the Sun Ring’s slave pits and hundreds spilled out into the streets of Meridian, desperate for escape.

 

Avad remembers reaching the Solarium and seeing his father standing in its center, waiting. Across the room, Avad sees Helis with Itamen clutched in one arm, across the room, half-hidden in the darkness near the doorway. Their eyes meet for just a second, and then Helis is gone, Itamen and Nasadi with him.

 

“Follow that kestrel,” Avad orders, and two of his team break off to give chase. They give Jiran a wide berth, but the man makes no move to stop them, and when the door Helis slipped out of slams shut again, a grin slowly crawls across the Mad Sun-King’s face.

 

“Jiran,” Avad says. “Come with us. Meridian is ours. You have lost.”

 

“I am the chosen of the Sun,” Jiran says. “I am the ruler by divine right. My will is the will of the Sun.”

 

“Your will is your own,” Avad says. “Will you answer for your crimes with honor?”

 

“You attack your own city of Holy Meridian and wish to lecture me about  _ honor _ ?” Jiran snarls. He draws a sword from the seathe at his hip and points it directly at Avad.

 

There’s a beat, a moment. It hangs in the air, waiting.

 

Jiran lunges towards them.

 

Their fight is short - Jiran is older and weaker and driven by madness, and Avad has been training every day in the hot sun since he was five years old. It is only a few quick movements before Jiran is toppled, Avad’s sword sunk deep into his chest, blood already pooling around them both.

 

“May you only ever know shadows.” Jiran splutters his final words, and then he stills, all trace of life leaving the man Avad once called father.

 

Avad thinks of his father losing card games on purpose to make him feel better. How Jiran would throw the cards into the air with mock-frustration. Avad thinks of how Aminah would tickle him until he cried from laughter, how Kadaman was only ticklish on his feet and would tease Avad for being ticklish everywhere. Avad thinks of sparring with Kadaman, the strain and the sweat under the noontime sun. Avad thinks of Jiran placing him on his shoulders, one knee on either side of his head, and would walk around the Meridian market so Avad would be on top of the world.

 

Avad crumples over his father’s body and weeps.

  
  


* * *

  
  


In the wake of the Sun-King’s death, the sky does not darken. The Sun does not cease its movements. Life continues on as it always has and always will. The Sun-Priests, the ones who didn’t flee from Meridian, proclaim that Jiran was no longer a true Sun-King, for if a true Sun-King was struck down, darkness would have fallen.

 

The Shadow Carja in the west are a problem and Avad knows they will remain so, but still,  the next two years are peaceful. Never easy, but easier than his childhood. They open the city to all who wish to come. Avad turns the Sun Ring into a memorial, a place of remembrance, a place where pilgrims may come to remember their loved ones and the blood that was shed here. They rebuild the gate only to keep it open always.

 

They call him Radiant Avad. The new Sun-King. The Liberator.

  
  


* * *

  
  


There comes a time, even later, after more battles and more destruction and Ersa’s death and the Eclipse’s attack, where Aloy visits him in the palace and they walk together in the gardens and she tells her tale - all of it, not just the bits and pieces that she’s shared before, but every last thing that she can.

 

She tells him of Gaia -- essentially a machine goddess, designed to repopulate the world with plants and animals and then, finally, humans. She talks of her adventures in buried ruins, uncovering the secrets of humanity’s final days. The amount of  _ time _ that must have stretched between the end of days and their current one is astounding, and Avad quickly gives up trying to wrap his head around it.

 

And he tells her his own story: the tale of a frightened boy who grew into a brave man because he needed to do what is  _ right _ .

 

Avad gazes out over the stretching forests beneath Meridian at the glorious setting sun, a friend and confidant beside him. The two of them sit in the gardens and watch the sun slink under the horizon, glad for this small moment of peace.

  
  
  



End file.
